


Common Tongue

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Skyhold, Slice of Life, Team Yolo, Your Advisors' Needlessly Complicated Plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right words, wrong time. Dorian and Bull, fumbling toward each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> My entry into the Adoribull minibang! Enjoy everything. Thanks to klickitats for kicking this into shape.

His superiors' superiors had posed one simple question to him, in all the time he'd been in the Inquisition: _If we are necessitated to break them, how should we do it?_ It was a thought exercise, the note in the dead drop had said, just like his Chargers were a cover story. Send it when he could, along with his next report.

So Bull got himself invited to war table meetings once in a while. Cullen and Leliana usually had jobs for the Chargers, and even though they went through Krem most of the time, it wasn't hard to arrange for Krem to be unavoidably detained. And they didn't ask him to leave after he gave his report, which meant they didn't talk about anything of real substance when he was there. If nothing else, Bull could report back to his superiors: the advisors speak with one voice, but fight like three qalaba with a string in private.

Leliana and Cullen's favorite string was Josephine, and Josephine's safety when Josephine left Skyhold.

"We'll send a company of our finest with her," Cullen said. "We need to make a show of force."

"Which will be as good as pinning a target on her back," Leliana said. "I will send Ripper with her. She poses beautifully as a serving maid."

"Serah Ripper is quite capable," Josephine said, "and whoever the commander chooses to accompany me will be excellent."

Then she crossed the room to serve Bull a cup of the cocoa she'd had brought up for him in a pretty little silver service. It was an excuse to move away from the table, create a silence, make Leliana and Cullen focus on her and not their argument. Still. It saved him the trouble of pouring--she was a good kid, a _considerate_ kid, and somewhere along the line she must have figured out that having one eye to see out of made judging distances tricky when handling liquids. She'd have a dozen tamassrans eating out of her hand by lunchtime, with some time to spare for the Ariqun herself before sundown. 

Josephine turned back to look at the two of them, and Bull took a sip. Good stuff. Needed some guimauves. "Perhaps there's some middle ground we could find," she said, "between waving a 'This is Ambassador Montilyet, please attack her' sign over my head, and leaving me largely undefended but for one bodyguard."

"Creators, she's being sarcastic," Inquisitor Lavellan said. She sat on the opposite end of the war table with a knife out, whittling designs into her staff while her advisors bickered. "Next thing you know, she'll outright say you can blow it out your arses." 

"What I mean to say," Josephine said, sweeping back around the table, putting a hand on Cullen's wrist, and Leliana's shoulder, right where they'd both feel the contact most acutely, "is that perhaps your concern is unwarranted, and this is only a very small party."

"Maybe the Iron Bull has a suggestion," the Inquisitor said, looking up from her carving for the first time in the past half-hour. _If you're going to squat in our meeting, you'd better have a fuckin' suggestion,_ her face said. 

"Send the Chargers with her," said Bull. "Word's gotten around that we're working for the Inquisition, but you're obviously not going to send out Josie without a full honor guard. With us, she could be any noblewoman you're protecting." 

"And as for her personal bodyguard?"

"Leliana, I hardly need a bodyguard--"

The door to the war room burst open and hit the wall with a bang. Bull sat back, watching how everyone reacted. In the space of about a half a second: Cullen's hand went to his sword, Josephine looked to Leliana, and Leliana reached for Josephine, to throw her to the ground behind the war table. The Inquisitor did nothing at all except raise an eyebrow and blow some wood dust off her staff. 

But it was just Dorian, with a tome in his arms, making an _entrance_ , like he wasn't coming unannounced into a room with a mage who ate mages like him for breakfast, and two of the worst burn-out cases Bull had seen this side of the Waking Sea. It took some nerve, at least. Bull would give him that. Lots of nerve, a good jawline, a well-placed mole, smooth, unweathered skin, one of those dangly gold earrings in his left ear, and an exposed collarbone. And that was the sum total of the guy, if you weren't looking too hard.

"Commander Cullen, I've acquired the book you needed. Does Lady Josephine need a bodyguard? I," Dorian said, and his gaze swept the room, to make sure everyone was hanging on his words, "humbly offer my services."

"I'm listening," Josephine said, and gave Cullen and Leliana a quelling look.

"One: I have braved countless Minrathous parties, and one learns to see the assassination attempts coming. Two: I'm a menacing 'Vint, and having me on a leash will make you seem dashing--even more dashing than you already are. Three," he said--there it was, another little pause, probably to disguise that he was pulling all this out of his ass--"I make an excellent accessory. There is no color I don't look good in."

"Powder blue, leaf-green, olive-green," Leliana said, eyes narrowed. Cullen nodded along, like he had any idea what she was talking about. "Bright pink. Grey. A certain shade of pale orange--most shades of orange will do nothing for you. I can keep going, if you wish."

"No, no, my confidence is thoroughly punctured, I assure you," Dorian said. He didn't look put out at all. "Lady Josephine?"

Josephine considered it for two entire seconds. "Very well."

Cullen began, "You can't possibly be serious," at the same time as Leliana said, "This is _mad_ ," and Josephine held up a hand. They stopped speaking immediately. Bull finished his cocoa, wondered if they had any idea how well she had them trained.

"The matter is resolved," she said. "I won't hear another word. The sooner I arrive, the sooner I can begin separating Lady DuMollin from her silverite mines." Then she turned to Bull, with a very polite, almost convincing expression on her face. "Iron Bull," she said, "if I might have a word with you in private, please? About your Chargers."

Josephine took him out to the garden, where there was no one but a Chantry sister weeding and humming to herself. It was as close to private as you could get, in Skyhold. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose, then exhaled, slow and steady. It'd be easy, right now, to ask her if Leliana and Cullen's concern was exhausting--cloying, even. Get her talking. Get something he might be able to use, somewhere down the line, _if we are necessitated to break them._

But Josie made sure he had a stool to sit on when he was obviously spying on them, and something to put his bad leg up on, too. She poured the drinks. She could put herself right in someone else's head, and she used that skill to be kind. Most of the time, at least. And she was smart enough to know when someone was trying to get her to spill her guts. "I should like to take Lieutenant Aclassi with me," she said, once she'd calmed down. 

"You can call him 'Krem,' you know," he said.

"I suppose I could,'" Josie said. "Grim and Skinner, too, and some of your rank-and-file; I will leave the selection to you."

"You sure you want Skinner on this one? If she doesn't steal everything that isn't nailed down, she'll get into a brawl. Or both."

"Then I will speak with her beforehand--I'm sure she can't be so different from Sera," Josie said. 

She wasn't completely wrong, but she wasn't right, either. Even the best-intentioned human had that blindness, when it came to elves: if they were both thieving, murderous little shits, and they both hated nobles, then they had to be the same on the inside, too. If Josie had made any headway in curbing Sera's worst habits, it was only because Sera could be contained and directed by a pretty face, a nice rack, a steady supply of her favorite jam, a list of acceptable targets, all of which Josie had.

Skinner was a whole lot older--and a whole lot more stable, in her own way--and she wouldn't give two fucks about anything Josie had to say. But it was better to let her make the mistake on her own and deal with the consequences. Krem would step in if things got too bad. 

So he said, "They're yours," and shook Josie's hand. It was absurdly tiny in his, and soft; he could feel every bone. How easy it would be to crush it. Shit. He held onto the thought: push that kind of thing away instead of examining it, and you'd already lost yourself. No desire or urge to cause Josephine harm, just the reminder he was big, and that came with the obligation to be gentle. "One question, though."

"Hmm?"

"Why Dorian?" 

Josie tapped her chin. "I know Ripper; I have worked with her before--'worked.' I wondered that my newest maid was six feet tall and muscled like a templar, and then she dispatched an assassin sent by"--she shrugged, and there was clearly way more to this story--"some misguided soul. So I returned her to Leliana, with a box of chocolates and a reminder that a mere advance warning would suffice, next time."

"And you're taking Dorian with you?"

"Ripper is excellent, but Dorian will be... motivated, I think. Wonderfully motivated," Josie said. She picked up a white pawn and turned it over and over in her hands. There was a faded old ink stain on the inside of her sleeve. "It's unlikely that I am going into grave danger, but if I return with so much as a scratch on my head, there will be no welcome in Skyhold for him. And if I am killed, there will be no corner of Thedas dark enough for him to hide from the Inquisition's wrath."

She sounded like she was discussing the wine list for a party. When she said shit like this, when she gave you a little peek of the steel in her spine that let her thrive in Orlais, it made him regret not making a real effort to get her in bed. He'd gone as far as inviting her for a drink, and Leliana had glared at him for a week. Besides--Josephine Montilyet didn't need anything from him, in the end. 

"Well, don't let him sweep you off your feet," he said.

"Ah, Iron Bull," said Josephine. "We both know I'm in no danger of _that_."

*

Card game in the throne room, once the day's judgments were passed and all the Orlesians had cleared out for the day. Sera didn't care about anything but the fact that Cassandra was wearing a shirt with no sleeves, and Varric was using her distraction to take her for all she was worth in a game of diamondback. Blackwall was as cagey as ever about the Wardens, which no one else seemed to notice or care about: not even a stiff drink loosened him up. But that wasn't the thread Bull was here to unravel. Besides, Sera liked the guy.

 _If we are necessitated—_ Blackwall wasn't senior enough to hurt the Inquisition. He made furniture, kept Sera out of trouble, and put hotheaded recruits on their asses for Cullen. He talked a good game about duty, got everyone real fired up, but it'd ding morale to have him gone, and not much more. Sera and Varric, who brought networks of informants along with them, were higher up on his list. And Cassandra was at the top, because the Inquisitor would be lost without her--not just the Inquisition, the Inquisitor herself. 

Thought exercise over. If he tried not to do it, it'd get worse. 

"Indigestion, Tiny?" Varric said, raking in the last of Sera's coin. "You've got a funny look on your face." 

"Nah," he said, and slipped Sera a handful of silvers under the table to keep her in the game. "Remembered an errand I've gotta run."

He had to get his head right, if he was going to be around people. First Josie's hand, now this. It was just orders, just something to think about while he kept an eye on things; but thinking about how he'd take down everyone he met was different from plotting who to have bumped off first if Par Vollen ever made a move in earnest. 

Good qunari knew that everyone outside the Qun was _bas_. They were things. _Kabethari,_ confused ones, at best.

"Iron Bull," Vivienne said, glancing up from her book, "a pleasant surprise." She pulled a slim black ledger out of the stack of books on her bed. "Do check these figures for me, darling. I've left Senior Enchanter Aurélie to run my circle on my behalf, but despite her name, she has no head for gold."

In private, she wore a pair of opal-rimmed spectacles to read, kept a wisp of veilfire hovering close to the page. One of those rare reminders--that he was just a few years younger than her, that she wasn't actually ageless and untouchable. That they'd both be slowing down in five, ten years. She patted the side of her chaise and went back to her book. Never turned him away, no matter what. He sat on the floor next to her to look out at the evening sky over the balcony, then turned his attention to the ledger, which was a fucking disaster. 

She'd ignore him until he was finished, but her hand crept to the itchy spot between his horns. Vivienne had enough demons of her own, literal and figurative, for Bull to burden her with his. He was content to sit here at her feet, and she'd let him, no questions asked. Josie was like most of tamassrans he'd known in his life: infinitely sure of herself and her role. But if Vivienne knew with absolute certainty where she fit in the world, it wasn't because the place had been made for her, but because she'd carved it out with her bare hands, and it made Bull feel more secure, being around her. Spend enough time around it, and it'd rub off on you. 

"What are you reading?" he asked, once he was done with his task.

"It's nonsense," Vivienne said. "Utter trash. It purports to be a series of conversations between an ancient magister and a pride demon, found on some dusty scroll in a tomb somewhere."

"How does that turn out for our 'Vint?" 

The book was old, heavily dog-eared. "She resists all temptation and slays the demon in the Fade, naturally," she said, running a finger over the book's cracked spine. "In reality, I'm sure she succumbed to its lures, or made some mistake, and was consumed by it—she is very young, in the book."

"And pride demons are the big, nasty ones."

"Only because we expect to see them thus when they're summoned into our world. In the Fade, they may take any shape they think will please you most, or even present themselves to you as a desire demon." Patient, like she was talking to an apprentice. "Do tell me if this worries you, darling." 

"Tell me how you get rid of them," Bull said. Demons were a childhood fear. What he already knew was inside of him was way worse than what might get in. 

"You order them firmly away," Vivienne said. "There's no great secret to it, I'm afraid--if your will is equal to the task. If your will was not equal to the task, you wouldn't attract such powerful demons." 

He could hear the lie in her voice, plain as day: the kind of lie you had to tell yourself in order to live. His first instinct was to draw the truth out of her, but his first instinct was what had landed him here in the first place. She'd be even more destructive than him if she ever went mad. He was never the scariest thing in the room when she was around, and here he was, at her feet, something for her to do with her hands for an hour. 

Vivienne sent him off, after a few hours of companionable silence, more centered than he'd been in days. He went out into the library and leaned against the door, taking a deep breath. 

It was noisy, this late at night. At sundown, the gangs of scholars and mages that roamed Skyhold kicked Solas out of the rotunda and took it over for high-level theoretical discussions: party time. Bull had joined them, once, at the Inquisitor's side. The way to get in good with people who lived in their brains more than the real world was to present yourself to them as a student, and he'd come out with a working knowledge of how to enchant different kinds of wood for staves, all of which he'd forgotten immediately the morning after. There had been a bunch of offers to explore the deepest reaches of his Fade, too, but he wasn't about to let his guard down around a strange mage. 

"Iron Bull," Dorian said, from his little alcove. He plucked a piece of cotton wool out of each ear and clapped the book in his lap shut. The sound, which would have echoed in the library otherwise, was swallowed up in the sound of five or six mages shouting below them--did they not invite Dorian down, or did he just not go? None of Bull's business. "I have a proposal for you." 

Well, then. He'd known Dorian was going to take him up on his offer at some point. _If you wanna explore that--_ he hadn't expected it to be in public. "Not tonight, big guy," he said. Any other time, sure. "The Iron Bull is closed for business." 

"I didn't mean...." Dorian made an angry sound in the back of his throat. "I didn't mean that."

And now came the sniping. _I'd thought they'd make you put a shirt on before entering the war room, but clearly I was wrong._ Or, _Did Vivienne need all of her furniture moved? You were in quite a rush to get to her balcony._ Easy blades to turn away. He'd been doing it since the day Inquisitor Lavellan had come back from Redcliffe with a bunch of bedraggled mages, and one Vint, who'd weathered the trip through the mountains without a single hair out of place. 

Bull had been watching, the day the mages arrived--to get a count for his reports, and because there were nearly as many scared little kids as there were adults. Dorian had been off to the side, doing his level best to look down his long nose at Haven, but one of the diplomats tasked with sorting out the refugees had mistaken him for a Circle mage, and put a blanket over his shoulders. He'd thanked the woman, and looked so relieved, when he thought no one was looking. He'd shivered, just once. Then he'd met the Iron Bull's eyes across the crowd, and his expression had said everything: _A qunari, here, of all places. Vishante kaffas, did I survive Alexius to die at the hands of a rabid oxman?_

But Haven was a world ago. "I wanted to ask your advice, you clod," Dorian said, to Bull's surprise. He held up a steaming mug, and Bull was guilty of staring at it for a minute, to make him twitch.

"All right," he said. He leaned against the rail and took a sip. Sugary tea, brewed in milk, the way they made it on Par Vollen. And in Tevinter, apparently. Dorian had made it with cinnamon, cloves, and, shit, cardamom, of all things. You couldn't get that, this far south. Good stuff. It was his lucky week for getting hot drinks from attractive people.

Down in the rotunda, the Inquisitor climbed up on a chair, glass of wine in hand, and began lecturing at the assembled company about the dangers of _Your so-called 'good spirits'!_ in grave, overloud tones. 

"I only wanted your thoughts," Dorian said. "The, ah, famed Iron Bull's thoughts on bodyguarding." He gave Bull a seeking look, like he was waiting to be told to fuck off-- he'd never done anything to endear himself to Bull, and he knew it. But he was offering himself up on a platter, and there was no reason to say no. 

"This could be a long conversation," Bull said. "Sure you don't want some beauty sleep instead?"

"If I leave Skyhold with bags under my eyes, I'll simply have to rely on my innate charisma and immaculate dress sense." Dorian re-curled one side of his mustache. "Duty requires sacrifice." 

Bull found himself grinning, despite himself. "Okay," he said, "the first rule is: be sure you take a good shit beforehand, because you're not going to let our Lady Josephine out of your sight for a minute."

And that was the easy part, he said. Find all the possible entrances and exits to the building. Get to know the staff as fast as you can, so you can spot impostors. Spend some time with the healers before you go, so you know how to keep someone alive through an arrow wound, a sword wound, a dagger wound, how to recognize common poisons, how to move an injured person without making their injury worse. Defer to Krem if there's an actual emergency, he knows what he's doing better than you ever will. And Dorian listened. Without opening his mouth. Without so much as a single smart remark. 

"There's something off about this," Bull said. His tea had gone cold while he was talking. "The milk's too thin." 

Dorian put a hand under the bottom of Bull's mug, and just like that, it was hot again. It had taken Bull months to get used to mages using their magic for everyday things. "Everything tastes wrong down here," he said. "Southerners don't know how to spice a dish. In Qarinus, the street vendors sold...." He trailed off--self-conscious? Wary of getting too personal. 

"You know what I miss," Bull said, in Tevene. His accent wasn't great, but Dorian, for one second, looked completely, consumingly delighted to hear his own language, before he remembered who it was coming from. Bull forged on: "Hot peppers. Where I come from on Par Vollen, little village north of Qunandar, the farmers grow one that'll blow your head off, sure as gaatlok. We're not supposed to have pissing contests under the Qun, but the Qun makes an exception for seeing who can eat the hottest pepper without crying." 

"They sold curry," said Dorian, after another moment's hesitation. "Every time you turned a corner, there was a stand selling some, in the same little paper boat, with a piece of flatbread to sop up the sauce. They all swear up and down their recipes have been passed down from the time of Hessarian, and who knows? Perhaps one or two of them weren't making it up."

And then, as soon as the moment had started, it was over. Dorian's gaze flicked down to the mages, and there was a little disdain there, and a lot of longing. There was somewhere to go from here. "Why'd you sign up for this job?" Bull asked, before he could think too hard about it. "It doesn't seem like your thing."

"You severely underestimate how much I enjoy being an expensive bauble. The silly red uniform does brilliant things for my shoulders." 

"What's the _real_ reason."

"If you must know--Lady Josephine has a connection in the Rivaini spicer's guild," Dorian said. "She had a sack of their wares brought to Skyhold, to make the 'Vints in her employ feel more at home--and me, as well. Accompanying her to a tedious party is the very least I can do to repay her for her kindness." 

Making outcasts love you was priceless, because they loved you with everything they had. Not that Josie would ever put it so coldly, but, hell, it'd worked on Dorian, judging by the crooked, affectionate smile on his face. It wasn't calculated; it lit Dorian up from within. 

"I should go," Bull said, setting the mug down on the bookshelf next to Dorian, careful to keep his bulk out of Dorian's personal space.

"As you will," said Dorian, putting the cotton wool back in his ears.

*

"We getting hazard pay for this, ser?" was Krem's first question about the job. "Of all the things, you sign me up for sodding party duty. Send me back to Therinfal; I'll take my chances with the red lyrium."

There was no heat in Krem's complaining. "She's already paying us enough to keep you in wine until you're a dirty old man," Bull said. "Remember how she almost got you to sign us up for free? Try and negotiate with her, she'll have you convinced you should be paying herfor the privilege of going along. Besides, she asked for 'Lieutenant Aclassi' specifically." 

"Did she?" Krem said. 

_That_ perked him up--which must have been Josephine's intention. Smooth maneuvering. Not so nice, to be on the other end of it. "You're lookin' a little shaggy there, Lieutenant. You wanna look like Aclassi guy for the Orlesians, you better clean up that haircut before you go out on the road." Krem's glower was halfhearted at best. "You in?" 

"I'm in," said Krem. "Anything else I should know?"

"Dorian's going, too." 

"The altus." He sounded like he'd stepped in mabari shit. 

"As the ambassador's bodyguard. Arm candy. Whatever. That going to be a problem?" 

"Only if he makes it one," said Krem. Now he was committed, just to stick it to a noble. "I know my job. Does he?" 

Dorian's face had been so avid, the other night, listening to Bull talk. Hungry, even. All knowledge was good knowledge. It made you wonder what it would be like, to be the object of that total focus. Bull shrugged. "I don't think he'll step on your toes, if that's what you mean." 

Krem rolled his eyes and pushed up from the desk, walked out into the main barracks. "I'm sure Orlais must look like a bag of kittens after Tevinter," he said, looking the room over. "He can take care of himself. We're working for Lady Montilyet, and that's it."

"Makes you feel better, you'd be better arm candy," Bull said, and clapped a hand on Krem's back. "Shit, look at those cheekbones."

"I know, chief," Krem said. He bent to pick a piece of lint off a pillowcase: when he was irritated, he got fussy. 'Vint class shit bugged him, but if he'd wanted to talk about it, he would have. So Bull didn't interrupt, but stood where he was, watching Krem walk down the rows, smoothing out wrinkled blankets, opening up footlockers to see that they were organized the way he liked.

You could see your reflection in the breastplates racked along the walls. You could shave your face with their swords. You could bounce a sovereign down the rows of bunks. And, sure, Bull could inspire loyalty, hack a guy in half with a single swing, plan a battle, but that wasn't enough. It was a cover. He'd never stayed embedded with one company for long on Seheron, because even if people didn't realize it consciously, they picked up on the little cues that said _he's not one of us_ after a while. But soldiering was Krem's entire life--the truest expression of what he was--and that sincerity of purpose was what had turned the Chargers into the _Bull's_ Chargers. 

The longer they stayed with the Inquisition, the more the signs of life creeped in around the edges, for all that Krem demanded perfection from his Chargers. A pair of boots with purple laces. An ugly brown blanket being painstakingly embroidered. A bed, made up without a single wrinkle, but turned down with the pillow at the foot of the bed, to piss Krem off. On Seheron, stens who tried to suppress this kind of thing were the ones who looked up one day and realized all their soldiers had turned Tal-Vashoth. 

"But, hey, there's an even bigger problem," Bull said. Give him something to solve, something to chew on to take his mind off the Dorian shit.

"Yeah?" Krem said, running his fingers over a hole in the armpit of someone's shirt.

"Lady Josephine asked for Skinner, too. By name, even." 

"You're _shitting_ me." Krem folded the shirt neatly and set it back in the footlocker. "No. Absolutely not. She'll burn the place down. Think Lady Montilyet's in her office?" 

"At this time of day?" Bull gave it a pause, to crank up the anxiety, get Krem's mind farther away from Dorian. "Always."

*

"This is the Iron Bull," Vivienne said to the dozen mages in front of her, lined up in two loose rows of six. If Krem was here, he'd be snapping at them to straighten up. But these were the best of the best, the cream of the crop, future knight-enchanters. You could tell the apostates from the Circle mages at a glance: apostates were healthier-looking, better-muscled, twitchier, more likely to have disguised their staves as fancy canes or polearms, or to have given up the staff altogether. "You may have heard of him"--some titters from the back row, they'd heard of him, all right, and he gave them a wink with his one remaining eye--"He'll be testing your barriers today."

He'd borrowed Krem's maul for the occasion, and the ones from the Circle eyed it up. "You first, ma'am," he said. 

"Naturally," said Vivienne. 

Cassandra had taught him a thing or two about knowing when a mage was putting together a spell. Thirteen mages pulling on the Veil at once felt prickly against his skin, and he resisted the urge to scratch at his face. Not the time to let Vivienne know he had templar tricks up his sleeve. He took a step back, wound up, and aimed the blow at Vivienne's kneecaps, and she didn't flinch when it glanced off her barrier. He'd known she wouldn't.

 _Don't you think this is a little risky?_ he'd said, when she'd first invited him. _Couldn't you just throw fireballs at them?_

_They wouldn't be in training if their barriers couldn't stand up to something as trivial as fire. I want to see who among them is frightened when an eight-foot man swings a hammer at them._

_It's a_ maul.

_Of course it is, darling._

He went down the line with them. The big one with the shortsword cringed into himself, away from the blow; the little elf in the Circle robes, couldn't be a day past twenty-five, stared defiantly into his eyes when he swung at her head. An eight-foot man with a maul was probably less scary than a hundred templars itching for an excuse to gut you. 

"Pair off, do what you will," Vivienne said to them, when he was done. She reserved judgment because she liked to make them nervous, not because she hadn't already passed it. "Do what you will" meant "beat the shit out of each other for Lady Vivienne's enjoyment," apparently. You could see the Inquisitor's fingerprints all over the staff-fighters' movements: measured, clean. Meant to end a fight as quickly and as decisively as possible. If Cass fought like something was trying to get out of her, the Inquisitor fought like everything was trying to kill her, which was great in the field, but not so great for sparring with. Cassandra was the only one tough enough to take her on, but that didn't mean people didn't try. 

The knight-enchanters-to-be weren't exactly on the Inquisitor's level yet. "The big one's afraid of qunari," Bull said, hanging back with Vivienne. "He was just about shitting himself the whole time I was standing next to you. And that elf is going to be trouble, if you don't get her in hand fast. I know that look." That was the look of an ashaad who knew he was the biggest, toughest thing in the room, threw himself into battle, and got himself killed in the first rush. Another string of numbers to send back to the tamassrans.

"I'll take that under consideration," Vivienne said. Her hand touched his wrist. She never asked any serious questions about Seheron, the same way he never asked her about growing up in the Circle. "And, look, there's Lord Dorian, in time to gawk at us."

He was across the practice yard, sitting on a fencepost, with his nose in a book, pretending he wasn't watching the mages fight. And he'd gotten himself dressed up for the occasion: a high-collared coat that buttoned diagonally up the front, nipped in the waist, fitted in the shoulders. Deep grey, in defiance of what Leliana had said about his colors--it did look good on him. Before Vivienne, he'd noticed clothes for what they said about the wearer, but never for the pleasure of looking at them. "Late for the show," Bull said. 

Vivienne sighed. "He's been there the entire time, I assure you."

"He asked me about bodyguarding the other night."

"For Lady Josephine's little affair? He tried to bribe me: a first edition of Arellier's _Taxonomy of Spirits_ , for information about his hostess."

"You take it?" 

"There's a particular satisfaction in watching the desperate squirm, but I did, in the end. Off you go, dear," Vivienne said, turning her eye on her students, "and tell Dorian to stop lurking and join us, if he wishes."

 _Dismissed, soldier_. Off he went, then--to Dorian, for lack of anything better to do with the next few hours. Maybe their conversation the other night had changed things, maybe it hadn't. Dorian's nod of greeting was cordial enough. 

And then he opened his mouth. "It doesn't make you nervous, being around so many powerful mages?" Dorian said. "Look at them. It'll take a battalion of these Southern templars to stop any one of them, when they're fully trained."

Not one of his better efforts. Bull ignored it. "You ever do anything like this in Tevinter?" he asked, instead. 

"I can't say I've ever had a qunari swing a maul at me to test my barrier," said Dorian. "Only Laetan mages need enlist in the army, in any event. Spoilt Altus learn to fight duels: one-on-one. Very genteel. Not much help, when there are twenty bandits bearing down on you at once."

The Inquisitor never took any other mages along with her in the field, and she took Cassandra over Bull or Blackwall, any day of the week. Good to know it pricked at someone else's pride, too. Solas had his rift research, Vivienne had her students, Dorian had--whatever odd jobs he could make for himself. "Lady Vivienne says you're welcome to go over there, if you want." 

"Ah, yes, and be held up as the big, bad Tevinter upon whom they'll all test their skills," Dorian said. "Thank you, but no thank you."

"You want to," Bull said. Wouldn't join the mages here, wouldn't join the mages in the library. "Bet you think you'd wipe the floor with them." 

"I don't think I would," Dorian said, "I know I would. Also"--he put his hand on Bull's forearm--"do brace yourself. You're going to be very uncomfortable in a moment." 

"For what?" Bull began to say, and then he _felt_ it. 

It was like a hand had reached inside his gut and squeezed, turned his bowels to water, his knees to jelly. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck, and he wiped it off with a trembling hand. And worst of all: the acrid burn of fear in his chest. He hadn't been afraid like this since he saw his first action on Seheron.

"Maker, that was cast wide," Dorian said. He was also sweating and shaking, cheeks flushed, teeth grit, and he leaned against the wall to support himself. Otherwise, though—his voice was level, his eyes were calm. "It was her," he said, pointing at the elf who hadn't flinched. "Little shite. She's trying to knock out as many people as she can. Panic spells aren't technically blood magic, mind, but they're close enough." Her opponent was fine, but the two pairs of mages closest to her went down to their knees. "It's a tournament," Dorian continued. "Winner takes on the Madame de Fer herself. And they wouldn't be knight-enchanters if they did not very much like to win."

Then he passed a hand over his face, and the sweat beading at his temples vanished. Easy as that. Bull was ready to leap out of his own skin, to turn tail and run up the mountain and hide. This shit was why they kept their saarebas chained up—there was a quiet place in his mind Cassandra had taught him to find, to recognize and negate this shit, and he _could not reach it—_

Dorian put a gloved hand on Bull's wrist, tentative now. "Stop. The more you fight it, the deeper it drags you down," he said. "It uses a templar's defenses against them, and I see you've a few of those tricks up your sleeve. Your metaphorical sleeve. Let me help you, you oaf, or you'll be feeling it for hours." 

Bull nodded. Dorian took his hand—big, strong hands for a human, especially for a mage, he managed to think around his panic—and squeezed. The other came up to cup the side of his face, on his blind side, and Dorian turned him so he couldn't see Vivienne and her students anymore, so his back was to the wall. 

"You need to give in to it," Dorian said. "If you're trying to use whatever scraps of templar knowledge you've been taught to dispel this yourself, I won't be able to remove all of it."

"No," Bull said. This was the feeling that had preceeded--what he'd done. To the 'Vints who'd killed all those kids. The edges of things looked crisper, sharper. The maul was out of reach, but he could still do a lot of damage with his bare hands, and he had, toward the very end, once he'd thrown his greataxe aside. And he'd liked it. He liked thinking about how to take other people apart. He was good at it. Wrench Dorian's arm out of its socket, dislocate it, to start. Pain meant it'd be harder for him to cast. Stop a mage from getting that first spell off, and you could take them them apart, easy. Any barrier could come down, if you punched it enough times. "Shit, no--"

"It's not real. Whatever you're feeling, it's not you. You need to trust that, and give in. Maraas shokra, Hissrad." Dorian's thumb stroked down Bull's forehead, over his eyepatch, to rest at the corner of his mouth. 

It was him. But Dorian couldn't have known that, didn't know the first damn thing about Hissrad, who'd been called Ashaad, or Sten, had once been Ashkaari: he only knew the Iron Bull, and thought that was all there was to it. 

Think about--not the Qun. Think about Krem. Krem didn't get any special enjoyment out of killing. He fought like a carpenter turned a board: it was his craft. Living proof that you could do what they did and not succumb to madness. It washed over him like a river, every horrible urge he'd ever had, and he didn't fight them. Focused on the feeling of Dorian's big, warm hand on his face. Dorian, who baited him because, when it came down to it, he wasn't afraid. 

"Get it over with," Bull muttered, and Dorian shushed him.

He saw a glow out of the corner of his eyes, and then his head was clear. It was a ringing clearness, like a bell; it didn't feel right at all. It wouldn't hold. "'Thank you, Dorian,'" Dorian said. "You're welcome, Bull. Go lie down and sleep it off. You'll have a beastly headache later."

"You know some of the Qun," Bull said, tongue thick in his mouth. "You know my name."

"You shouldn't tell Sera anything you don't also want me to know," Dorian said. "And every schoolchild learns a bit. Know your enemy, and all that." 

_Don't you dare read into this, you lummox._ Bull wasn't about to push. "Sure," he said. "And, hey, you got it wrong."

"Excuse me?"

"Not the Qun. Those guys, over there." Bull nodded at the mages, who'd winnowed down the field to the little elf and a tall, slender apostate. "They wouldn't be knight-enchanters," he said, "if they didn't want to be untouchable. They could stand to get their confidence shaken up a little. Think about it." 

"Perhaps," Dorian said, and returned to his book. His hand, when it turned the page, was shaking.

*

Skyhold was still run down as shit, but it was developing a rhythm, and the best place to put your finger on its heartbeat was in the Herald's Rest.

One night a week, the off-duty guards took over the tavern, pushed some tables together, stuck a fat cask of ale in the middle of everything, got rowdy. If Krem hadn't run him and the Chargers ragged today to make up for the fact that he'd be gone for a few weeks, he would have gone down and joined them. Good opportunity find out what kinds of things they saw, up there on those walls, in the mountains, down in the valley--what kinds of people Cullen picked to watch the doors.

 _If we are necessitated:_ no. Not tonight. Tonight, he was watching for himself, and no one else. 

Cassandra and the Inquisitor had their heads together in one of the unoccupied corners, with a map on the table between them. Crestwood. They were heading out in a few days. All the time he'd been with the Inquisition, he could count on one hand (the hand with the two missing fingers) the times he'd seen the boss without Cassandra glued to her side, glowering over her shoulder at anyone who twitched funny in her general direction. 

Across the room from them, right below Bull, the advisors picked at each other's dinners. Josephine wagged a finger in Cullen's face in between bites, telling him to remember to sleep enough and delegate his shit, while Leliana laughed at the two of them. Cullen gave Josephine a sheepish smile and nodded, and Josephine leaned back in her chair. She crooked her finger, beckoning him down to her level, patted his cheek, and stole the last roll from his plate. A merchant, a warrior, a priest. It was a leadership structure that his superiors understood, but--it wasn't like the Qun was cold. It wasn't unfeeling. But it didn't allow for this kind of warmth outside your own class.

And Varric was drinking with a couple of stablehands, who were trying to look like they weren't eating up whatever story he was telling them to distract them from his cheating. Sera and Dorian, though--nowhere to be seen. This was usually their night to soften up the rubes before Varric cleaned up.

There was a loud groan from Sera's little alcove. Well, that explained that. He pushed up from his stool to go and check on her, and stopped short when he saw her lying face down with her head to the side, and Dorian sitting next to her on the window seat, stroking the back of her neck. 

"You idiot girl," Dorian was saying, "you absolutely dreadful little beast, just let me help you. I can't very well make my debut in Orlesian society with bags under my eyes."

"Piss off, then," Sera groaned. "Magic exists to serve my arse."

"Well, you certainly haven't got enough arse to rule over. And if you're going to swear at me today--"

"Fine," she snapped, and then, in clear, careful Tevene: "You shit on my tongue. You shit in my ears, you shit into my nose, you shit under my foot. Please go take a big hot flying fuck atop the sun." 

Ten years on Seheron, and you got to know how 'Vints swore when they stubbed their toes, when they thought they had you cornered, when they were begging for their lives. Only the first phrase was colloquial; the rest were—Bull crossed his arms. A grammar lesson, was what they were. Dorian was teaching her prepositions.

"Your accent is wonderful," Dorian said, and Sera groaned and lifted her middle finger from her nest of pillows. "At least let me do something for your stomach. It's just a potion."

Sera rolled onto her back and sat up. Dorian passed an affectionate hand over her sweaty forehead, without even a hint of distaste. Scowling, she tried to headbutt his hand away, missed, drew her knees up to her chest. "You promise? No magic?" 

"No magic, ever," he said, and passed her a flask. "Down the hatch."

"Not even if I'm dying," Sera said. She uncorked it and took a cautious sniff.

"Not even," Dorian said. "I'm no healer."

"Except if it's demons. If a demon gets in me, use whatever you want to get it out, I don't care." Then she drank the whole thing down. "Now sod off, witchy tits." 

She shut her eyes. Dorian stayed where he was, stroking her hair until she fell asleep. Only when her breathing slowed and evened did he look up. "Oh," he said. "It's you."

"What's up with her?" Bull asked, staying at the doorway. 

"She drank the last of my restorative draughts," Dorian said, picking a rucksack up off of Sera's floor and picking clothes off of shelves to put in it. He ran made a gesture over an oilcloth cloak, and a gold light pulsed through the fabric: some kind of enchantment. The tremor in his hand hadn't gone away. "She heard there were corpses rising from the lake in Crestwood--made herself ill with worry. And cake. I'm given to understand there was a great deal of cake involved. I cannot for the life of me fathom why the Herald would bring her along for _this_ , of all things." 

It was obvious, to Bull's eyes: Sera shot fast and hard, like a Dalish archer, and that was what the Inquisitor was used to working with. Varric and Bianca were good for taking one target at a time down and keeping them down, but they didn't lay down cover fire half as well as Sera. Sometimes, you didn't need to hit somebody; you just needed to distract them for a second while someone with a sword bashed their skull in. But that wasn't really what Dorian was asking. "How about you?" Bull asked. "You know, after the other day."

Dorian took up Sera's quiver and counted the arrows in it, then went into a basket and filled it to his satisfaction. "Fine," he said, clenching and unclenching his hand. "I've dispelled magic before, I promise you."

"Your hand," said Bull. 

"Ah. That. It'll pass." Dorian looked down at it. "Those of us who haven't spent our entire lives poisoning ourselves with lyrium have to--how to explain it. You have to take that sort of spell into yourself to dissipate it. It makes one long for a fireball." 

"So you felt what I felt?"

"After a fashion. Echoes, mostly," Dorian said. Big, obvious lie, written all over his face. "Do you feel like that all the time?"

He didn't sound pitying, only curious. Like the Iron Bull was a puzzle he wanted to take apart and solve. With anyone else, in any other moment, he would have joked it off-- _hey, I thought Seheron was rough, but then I went to Halamshiral. Made me wish a couple of Fog Warriors got the drop on me in the ass-end of some jungle somewhere. The snacks are better in Orlais, though._ But Bull shrugged. "Some days are better than others. You still feeling it?" 

"I thought about hitting Solas, yesterday evening--but it was over something very petty, which means it was one of my baser urgers, rather than a Bull-inspired outburst. In any event, now we're even." 

"You're not petty," said Bull, and if they were friends, he would have followed that up with a gentle clap to the shoulder. At this point, he didn't know _what_ they were. Dorian seemed fine enough. "It's not an exchange. Look at you, teaching Sera Tevene."

Dorian looked thrown, and, yeah, people were usually thrown when the big dumb qunari noticed shit, but that didn't mean it didn't sting. You got used to it, after a while. Helped with the cover. 

Then Dorian recovered, walked past him, out of Sera's room. "I see you've caught me out--did you know," he said, "that she speaks Orlesian, and understands Antivan? I saw her flirting with one of Leliana's agents, one of the tall, dark, murderous, bosomy ones, and then saw her eavesdropping on Lady Josephine and an Antivan merchant, the next. No matter how you work out the numbers, she can't have had a great deal of time to develop her fluency, and she thinks absolutely nothing of it." 

Shit, even Bull hadn't noticed that. Sera wasn't great at words--in her own language. But she wanted to know. She'd known what viddathari were, even if she couldn't be fucked to say the whole word. All the times he'd seen her pestering Solas: _'What's the word for when you do like Lady Josie does and say the thing without saying the thing, but actually you're telling it to shove it somewhere tight and warm?' 'To imply, Sera.'_ And Bull hadn't bothered adding anything up. 

Dorian had. Still, 'Vints were weird about things that were exceptional, especially elves. He'd taken in enough runaway slaves on Seheron to know how it went in Tevinter. "How'd that start?" he said. "I can't see Tevene being first on her list of things to learn. You give her a nudge, there?" Better to be frank about it, with someone like Dorian. He could use someone who wasn't fazed by him, who could be honest with him.

"Oh, I see," Dorian said, and his mouth twisted into a frown. "Now you're suspicious of my motives. I knew you had it in you. Tell me, Iron Bull--tell me what, in that exchange you witnessed, gives you grounds for doubt."

His voice hadn't risen above a whisper, so as not to draw attention, but he sounded fucking furious. And here was where Bull screwed up, with Dorian: what he said wasn't incorrect, but the timing was. It had been true with _I would conquer you,_ and it was true, tonight. And they'd been getting along so well, too. Shit.

Before Bull could respond, Dorian charged on, "Nothing at all, I'd wager. But I'm a selfish magister who can't see that someone has a remarkable gift without wanting to exploit it. You've caught me out: when this is all over and the world is saved, I'm going to lure her back to Qarinus and employ her as my personal eavesdropper. Do you think she'll take her wages in jam? Wages! I'd even _pay_ her. Remarkable--a 'Vint, paying an elf."

"Come on, big guy, you know that's not what I meant." There had to be some peaceful way out of this, but Dorian's hackles were up, so joking it off wouldn't work, and flirting wasn't going to work, either. 

"Of course not. Tell me what you did mean, then. Tell me exactly what you were thinking."

"We don't have to do this," Bull said.

"Tell me." 

Honesty it was, then. "All right, big guy. I was wondering if you'd still be friends with her if you didn't think she was special, somehow. Different from all the other elves you'd known."

"She's terrified of magic, but she sees a Tevinter mage drinking alone and attaches herself to him. The  
qunari are terrifying oxmen, and the Wardens are figments of her childhood nightmares, and yet she's taken you and Blackwall under her wing, too. How could anyone fail to love her?"

Dorian had come all this way to try and be a better Tevinter than his countrymen, to overcome what he'd been taught. Sera was way more than an object lesson in respecting elves, to Dorian. At the top of his game, Hissrad might have forseen this sore spot, but the Iron Bull had left that person behind when he'd crossed the border into Orlais.

"They couldn't," Bull said. 

"Precisely. Now, if you'll excuse me, I meant what I said about bags under my eyes. Good night, Iron Bull."

*

It was raining, the day the Inquisitor came back from Crestwood, and it kept raining for days and days afterward.

"This is the best cloak I've ever owned," Sera said, shaking the water out on the floor of Krem's office. "Never gets soaked, dries in a snap. Wonder whose it was--Solas's? Fiona's? Who cares. I'm back, let's make some bombs."

The sack over her shoulder clinked with empty glass flasks, and she led him out of the barracks and up to Skyhold proper, to the stables. The whole walk, she darted ahead of him and circled around behind while she talked about the trip, but she didn't get more than two feet from him. Spooked by the demon shit they'd seen out there, probably. If he wanted to reassure her, his entire hand could span her upper back, but it was just proximity she needed.

"What are we making?" he said, once he'd dried off. 

"Ice bombs!" she said, climbing up to the hayloft. "Demons hate ice. You like ice. _I_ like ice, lots. Inky showed me where to hit a frozen demon so it'd shatter right away--left one alive and squirming at the end of a fight so I could practice"--she wrinkled her nose, her bravado faltering for a second--"so now I won't have to wait for her to freeze the baddies before I stick an arrow in 'em. Everyone's happy. Except the demons."

"In the stables? You sure?"

"Master Dennett doesn't care, as long as I don't explode the horses." Lie. "And as long as I stay _well_ out of the way." Lie. "And don't let him see or hear me." Truth. Too bad you could hear her laughing halfway down the mountain. "And Blackwall's down there to let me know if"--she needed to make a quick exit--"I'm being too loud. But Blackwall's off fixing some roof somewhere, or whatever, so I figure a Ben-Hassnatch spy is the next best thing." 

She laid her materials out on the ground. When she rolled her sleeves up, you could see the webbed, angry mass of burn scars down her left arm: souvenirs of the Tempest learning process. "You clean the flasks while I work," she said, handing him her empties, and a cloth. 

"'Why would she think I'm a better source of incendiary liquids than the quartermaster?' my arse," Sera was saying. "Leliana's got some right good stuff stashed away in that tower. Look at this!" She put on a thick leather glove and reached into a steel box. "Pure frostrock, right out of the Deep Roads, not the powder you get at the market that's cut down to nothing. And she gave it to me. What's it called when you're trying to head someone off at the pass because you know they're about to do something you won't like?"

"Preempt." 

"Yeah, that. Preempted me. Said it was a birthday present." She looked up at him. "Bull, I don't even know my own birthday. Spooky, that."

"Makes you feel any better, I don't either."

Sera looked up from where she was mixing things into tiny vials. Her test subjects were little wooden carvings of Corypheus, handmade with love, scorched almost beyond recognition. "Don't what?" 

"Never mind," he said. 

"Oh! I got a letter," she said. "From Dorian. At his fancy party. Week ago. Don't know how the bloody bird found me at Caer Bronach, but it did. Leliana and Cullen made me read out all the Lady Josie bits in the war room for them, twice." 

"How's it going?" 

"Well." Sera set her vial aside and pulled the letter from a pocket with a flourish. "Skinner punched some arsehole guard in the face, and Dorian's pretty sure he saw her make off with half the silverware and plant the other half on one of the guests so it'd look like he did the deed and not her, and Dorian talked a _whole case_ of wine out of the nob hosting the party because, whatever, whatever, 'my overwhelming charm and devastating good looks,' 'likes strapping young people, exotic liqueurs, and exclusive soirees,' then he talks about clothes for a few paragraphs, which is boring, oh, and here's a bit for you. 'Tell the Iron Bull: his advice was spot-on, and I did indeed spend a goodly amount of time in the privy beforehand, which was the kindest thing I could have done for myself.' Is he telling you about his dumps? Why does he want you to know about his dumps? Is it a Tevinter thing? Is it a Qun thing? Bunch of weirdies. He'll be back soon and he sends his _fondest regards._ " 

The takeaway: something had stopped Krem from intervening before Skinner got out of control; Skinner was lucky she was so useful for so many things, because no one else would get off with nothing but a stern talking-to for pulling that kind of shit when they were on a job, let alone representing the Inquisition; and no one had ever written Sera a real letter before. 

Sera folded it up and jammed it back into its pocket, fast, as if someone was going to take it from her, but her fingers drummed relentlessly over it, until eventually she gave in and pulled it out again. 

He took the moment to flip through her notebook. Lots of formulas and recipes for potions. Lots of scribbles of women's asses, and he found that he could identify them: wide and generous, Josephine. A lean one that was probably Leliana, and an entire page of muscular ones--obviously Cassandra. Notes to herself, on what she'd stolen from whom. And then, in the very back, two full pages of verb conjugations in Tevene. 

"What's all this?" he asked, holding it up.

Sera squinted at the page he'd held up. "Dorian's trying to teach me," she said. "Pass me a flask, yeah? One of the clean ones, you tit. Swears are how _I_ learn best; they've got all the word bits in them. But you need to know other stuff, too, so I stole some books out of Vivi's pile. 

"It's all, translate this bit about 'Magister Vespasiana of House Whatever sacrificed herself for the glory of battle defending Vyrantium against the aggression of the northern brutes, now decline all these nouns,' not so hard. Lots of gory bits." She frowned. "And they're all like that. Amo, amas, amat, such-and-such soldier got skewered. Or drowned in a shipwreck. Shite," she said, pouring out the contents of a vial onto a wooden Corypheus, to no effect. "I'll get it."

The rain had cleared up, by degrees. There were two women shouting in Orlesian below the window. He looked out. A soldier was down on her knees in front of a messenger, fervently kissing the back of her hands and ignoring the messenger's defiant hair-tosses. Some of the stablehands had come out to watch the show. He understood enough Orlesian to get the gist of what Orlesians said when they thought he couldn't understand them, which usually boiled down to _This smelly brute? Are you sure, mon ami?_ and _Maker's breath, I'd give that a ride,_ but he wasn't fluent by any stretch of the imagination.

"Wonder what they're yelling about," Bull said. 

Sera, scribbling notes down in her book, didn't even look up. "Nasal Voice is mad because Snotty Voice went at it with two girls last night. 'Ze diplomats, zey long for ze wild nights, hon hon.' That's what she sounds like in King's Tongue." She listened for another second and snorted. "And she didn't invite Nasal Voice along. I think I know Snotty Voice--think I've _known_ her a few times. Tall, got a broadsword? Loads and loads of brown hair, up in a bun?"

"That's the one." 

"And Nasal Voice is Antivan-looking, yeah? They do this 'round once a week, they'll be fine." Bull would bet his left horn she'd been the cause of more than one of those fights. "Anyway," Sera continued, "Dorian's like a baby. You know, when I found him, he couldn't even lift a coin purse? Didn't speak a bloody word of Orlesian, and I tell him, you have to know some Orlesian, else you don't know when they're talking shit about you and yours. So we play drinks and insults, and I give him some Orlesian and he gives me some 'Vint. Someone has to watch out for him." She made a big show of eyeing Bull up suspiciously, and then she charged on anyway. "Lot of former templar pissers who want to make a point. I hear stuff. I stop stuff." 

"What kinds of things?"

"Why do you care? Only works if they don't see you coming, anyway." 

Her little face was fiercer than Bull had ever seen it. He'd fucked this up so much worse than he'd thought. They were teaching each other the languages they knew. _She_ wanted to be the one to keep Dorian safe. If they were qunari, they'd already be calling each other kadan.

If they were qunari, the Qun would destroy them both.

Sera would batter herself bloody trying to get out of any role they tried to put her in. Not disciplined enough to be aqun-athlok, not patient enough to be a smith, not calm enough to be a priest. He'd seen hard cases like her, and once upon a time, he'd agreed with the re-educators--that sometimes, they just weren't worth the effort. _Shokrakar_. One who struggles against their role. Break out the qamek, finish it fast, send her off to do perform tasks you needed little viddathari fingers for. 

They'd sew Dorian's mouth shut. Put him on a leash. Cover that face, stick him in a karataam with a dozen other saarebas, and use him to burn shit down on Seheron; convince him that the best thing to do if he got separated from his handler was to kill himself, that the Qun demanded his sacrifice. 

It'd be a waste. 

He kept cleaning flasks, methodically, watching Sera beat her head against the wall with her ice bombs. Every one of Sera's little Corypheuses had a different misspelling of his name carved into them. Blackwall's tools, Sera's own messy hand. _Corfytits. Coryphallus. Corblimeyus._ It'd all be squashed right out of her. 

He heard it, when someone important enough to make all the stablehands shut up and scatter entered the stables. The click of heels on the dirt floor. Vivienne, bare-headed, poked her head up into the loft. "There you are, Iron Bull," she said, pulling herself up the rest of the way. She never looked out-of-place, anywhere she went. "If you're done playing with Sera's toys, I've--"

"We're working," Sera said. 

"I see." Vivienne looked over Sera's supplies, spread out over the loft floor. Dirty vials, empty flasks, discarded test subjects. "You obtained this frostrock from Leliana, did you not?" Sera nodded, cautiously. "You've thought to adjust the ratio of distillation agent down, to account for the frostrock's purity," she said. "And that's correct. Very good. But one assumes you're still using the same--excessively strong--agent you'd use on your cheap materials. I'm sure Dagna will have recommendations for you. Does that solve your problem?" 

"Piss, you're right," Sera said, and frowned, brow furrowing. "Hey, Vivi?"

"Yes?"

"You're still shit."

"As are you, my dear," said Vivienne, without heat. "Iron Bull, if you would?" 

He looked at Sera, who was scribbling even more notes down. "Go on," she said. "I need to visit Widdle." 

"She would have gotten there, ma'am," Bull said, once they were out of the stables.

"Yes, but she has no formal training, and it would have taken her an age--darling, I think you're the one who's more than a little bit tamassran," Vivienne said. And before he had time to digest that, she added, "Lady Josephine and your Chargers were sighted on the mountain roads. I thought you might like to greet them."

"Thanks," Bull said. A flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He tensed. But he was surrounded by walls, on a mountaintop, not a little village on the edge of the jungle, and it was just Sera, tailing them from a distance. "You know your alchemy," he added, without pause, so Sera wouldn't know she'd been made. Shit, anyone else probably wouldn't have noticed her.

"I'm sure I would have joined the ranks of the Formari, had another path to power not presented itself when it did," Vivienne said. "Far more substantial power. Ah, look, they're raising the gates."

When they got there, Krem was helping Josephine her dismount. Lifted her bodily off her horse, around the waist, and lowered her to the ground, slowly. Little show-off. After she'd brushed the dust from her traveling skirts, he bent to kiss the back of her hand. Josephine's smile tried for polite acknowledgment of services rendered, overshot, and landed somewhere around completely fucking delighted. Then Leliana and Cullen came forward as one and enfolded her, Leliana's arm going around Josephine's shoulder, Cullen shoving a towel into her hands so she could dry off, whisking her off to the war room, or her office, or wherever they went when no one saw them for a day and a half. 

Dalish was there for Skinner, the rest of the officers were there for Krem and Grim--hell, most of the company had managed to weasel out of whatever Cullen had them doing and pack the courtyard, like Krem had been gone for years and years and not a few weeks. And Dorian had Sera. That was it. Sera, stripping the saddlebags off his horse and demanding to know how far up his ass that case of wine was, because she didn't see it on him.

When Dorian scanned the crowd, he looked right through Bull. 

Now wasn't the time.

*

"It was on Lady Josephine's orders." Krem got stiff when he was trying not to speak his mind. Jaw went tight, eyes stared at a spot in the middle of your forehead. Either Josephine had broken down his objections to whatever they'd done, or he was too embarrassed to tell his commanding officer that it hadn't occurred to him to argue at all. "She says: if you have any complaints, to bring them to her."

He looked different, somehow. More different than sleepless nights on the road could account for. It was the hair, Bull realized--it should have been shaggier than it was, but someone had taken a straight razor to the sides of his head and shaved him in a perfect gradient, bottom to top. Immaculate. Dorian's work.

"You have a good time?" Bull said. "At the party."

"Ser?" Krem said.

"Just wondering," he said. 

Krem's ears went red, which was all the confirmation Bull needed. "The food was good," he said. "There was dancing. It was nice."

Finding Dorian was the easy part.

"Sera," Bull said, sticking his head into her room. "Where's Dorian?"

"Out in the garden, playing fancy squares with Lady Josie," she grumbled, face-down in her pillows, hiding from her hangover. "Don't know how he's walking." 

Two birds, one stone. 

Josephine was in one of her day-off outfits, a Nevarran blue silk dress, probably the only thing she owned that didn't come up to her chin. She had a purple coat draped over her shoulders to ward off the cold. It was too broad in the shoulders, too long for her in the sleeves—probably Leliana's, maybe Cullen's. Silver jewelry, not gold. Dorian almost matched her, in a calf-length coat of an emerald green the same hue as hers, with delicate silver embroidery up the front. They were both so damn pretty on their own, and prettier when you put them next to each other, but more than that: Bull had caught them off-guard. Dorian's easy smile as he explained something on the board to her; Josephine's laugh, not politely stifled behind a hand before it could escape. 

It was Dorian who noticed him first. "It seems we've an audience," he said. Just like that, the two of them shuttered back up again.

"Lord Dorian has agreed to teach me to play," Josephine said. "Leliana and the commander are mad for it. I thought--perhaps I should learn."

"Cullen never loses at chess, but Lady Josephine never loses at _anything._ And she cheats at Wicked Grace, but she can't cheat at this. Check, by the way."

His tower was right on top of her king. "I don't cheat, Lord Dorian," Josephine said, "I outmaneuver." And then, offhanded as anything, she took the tower with her Arishok from halfway across the board. Dorian furrowed his brow, and Bull took a good look for the first time, to reconstruct the game. He knew Josie had played last; that helped. Going back--Dorian's first pawn had moved to e4. Josephine's first pawn had moved to c5. The Rivaini defense. Cullen's favorite open, when he played black. There was no way Dorian wasn't being hustled, here, but that was up to him to figure out.

_I think you're the one who's more than a little bit tamassran, darling._

"There's outmaneuvering, yes, and there's playing with the Angel of Death up your sleeve half the game," said Dorian, steepling his fingers and considering his next move. 

"Entirely fair," she said. "A failure of the imagination on your part. And now you have also learned not to bet against an Antivan." 

"With substantially fewer clothes lost!" 

"Lady Josephine, if you have a minute," Bull said, leaning against one of the columns. It felt like someone had dropped a hot coal into his knee, and the pain radiated down to his ankle; he needed to get his weight off of it, even if that'd make it worse when he started walking again. Josephine stood up immediately to give Bull her chair. He sat, grateful, and spared a glance for Dorian, who had the look of someone filing that little tidbit of information away for later use. "Krem told me to come to you about Skinner's incidents." 

"I'm given to understand you use Skinner and her people for--covert work," Josephine said. Standing up had put her at eye level with him. "Thievery, when necessary. I asked a favor of her." 

"And she agreed?"

"And she spat in Lady Josephine's face," Dorian said, tracing a finger down his cheek. "And Lady Josephine informed her that it was refreshing, to have someone spit in her face outright, rather than toss barbs where she might hear them. Here, I'll tell it: Skyhold is still in need of massive renovations, and no one is throwing stonemasons at us, and so our esteemed advisors devised a cunning and needlessly convoluted plan."

"Complex," Josephine cut in. "Not convoluted." 

"Yes, yes, _complex._ They arranged for me to be in the war room in time to think I could score points by offering myself up as Lady Josephine's bodyguard--as opposed to asking me--and then dangled me in front of the Orlesians like a great red flag, so that no one would suspect a notorious pacifist of using a notorious thief to plant stolen goods in a fellow guest's room--at which point Lady Josephine could offer herself up as an intermediary, to smooth things over with our hostess. The cost? Why, a mere two dozen bricklayers, a dozen stonemasons, the pick of his quarries, and free passage through his lands. Trifling, compared to Lady Josephine making this little incident disappear."

"That's not your style," Bull said.

Josephine shrugged: What do you know of my style, Iron Bull? "The man had many enemies. We would have utilized him sooner or later. It was Leliana's operation--I was merely a player. If it failed, I had blackmail material at hand, of course."

"The fistfight?" he asked, rather than start something now. He'd take it up with Leliana herself later, if this was one of her operations. The three of them used each other's people freely, but if they wanted to borrow one of the Bull's Chargers to stir shit on the Inquisition's behalf, they could ask first. 

"Skinner is--entirely different from Sera," Josephine said. "I'm told someone insulted your company's reputation, and she was unhappy. I'm sure you'll deal with it."

She didn't seem outwardly troubled by any of this, but, then, the file the Ben-Hassrath had on her said she'd been a bard, briefly; and that as ambassador to Orlais she'd ruined entire noble houses over insults to her king. Planting silverware on some noble who probably deserved worse would be nothing to her conscience.

Maybe that was part of what had always bugged him about Dorian, more than the sniping ever had: no dossier. No point of reference. The Ben-Hassrath had given him everything they had on the Inquisition before he'd gone to the Storm Coast, and they'd given him more information about Clan Lavellan--Free Marchers, halla breeders, spies--than they had about him. Hell, even Sera was famous, if you listened in the right places. Dorian Pavus was two sentences and a footnote in Gereon Alexius's file.

"If you'll excuse me, Iron Bull, Lord Dorian," Josephine said, "I've matters to attend to."

Dorian got up to go after her.

"Wait a minute, big guy," Bull said, in Tevene, to give them that little bit of privacy from eavesdroppers: three gardeners, two mages, a couple of messengers shirking their jobs.

"I'm sure I can't think of anything we have to say to one another," Dorian replied, in kind. But he sat back down. "Nothing I didn't say in my letter to Sera. Your advice was useful, I'm quite grateful, I'll be on my way, now." 

"How about, 'I was wrong, I'm sorry'?"

"Gratifying," Dorian said, mildly. 

Bull leaned back in his seat, to see if Dorian's gaze followed and stuck to the play of his muscles. It did. Good sign. "Are you still mad?" 

"I'm sure I've dealt you worse insults in the past, and never once thought to apologize. It can't possibly roll off of you that easily." 

"It does, but you're changing the subject. You still mad?"

Dorian scoffed, then examined the board. "As though yours was the worst questioning of my motives I've faced since joining the Inquisition. At least you've a care for Sera's feelings, and not a blind dislike for Tevinters--why, you even have an informed reason to hate my country. It's refreshing." 

"That doesn't make it right," Bull said. 

"Not at all," said Dorian, "but I think I can forgive you, this once. Do you play?" 

"Here and there," said Bull. Old Ben-Hassrath habit, for keeping his cover--downplay his talents. Keep them underestimating him. Maybe it was time to break this one. "Lady Josephine's got you. You're going down in three, four moves, tops."

"Nonsense."

"Let's play it out, then," Bull said. "Your turn. You gave Krem a haircut."

"Oh, yes, that," Dorian said, and offered his knight up to Bull's bishop as bait, so that he could take Bull's bishop. It was cute, when he was transparent. "Lady Josephine's idea. Your lieutenant happened to have brought an Inquisition dress uniform along, and looked very morose while she was preparing for the ball; and, in her infinite wisdom, she decided that both of us should accompany her. The looks on those overstuffed peacocks' faces when she walked in with a Tevinter on each arm--everyone expects an Antivan to be scandalous, but not _this_ scandalous." 

"If anyone could pull it off," said Bull. He didn't take the bait on the board. Even if he had, Dorian would still lose. 

"'Pull it off'? Maker, it was a triumph--give her five minutes alone in a room with Corypheus, and this entire affair will be over, and we'll all feel very silly about ourselves." Parties were good for free food, but they didn't get his blood pumping like they did Dorian's. And there was a fire in Dorian's eyes. "Picture it, Bull. The cream of Orlesian high society, rubbing shoulders with Lieutenant Cremisius Livius Maximilianus Aclassi of Minrathous. A mercenary lieutenant, of all things. Not even a formal rank. And having to be painstakingly polite to him, in order to avoid offending the Herald of Andraste's own emissary. I think the middle names are a nice touch, don't you? Lady Josephine stopped me at two."

"They like him?"

"Do they like anyone? He didn't stray more than an inch from Lady Josephine's side all night, except to dance with me, much to my surprise--where did he learn to dance? He's dreadful. He stepped on my toes twice."

"Scout Harding gives lessons," Bull said. He let his bishop go. "I think he dances pretty well. How expensive were your shoes?"

"Shatteringly expensive."

"There you go." 

They went quiet. The rest of the game was a matter of chasing each other's pieces around the board until Dorian realized there was nowhere for his king to run.

"Fasta vass," Dorian said, pushing a hand through his hair. "She's known how to play this whole time, hasn't she. We weren't even playing for coin, and she let me teach her." 

"Maybe she thought it was what you needed," Bull said. Shit, it was what he would've done. _More than a little bit tamassran._ He was Ben-Hassrath. He wasn't that kind of priest. It wasn't his role. "I don't think Lady Josephine knows how not to hustle someone." 

"You knew, too."

He could lie, say he'd seen her and Cullen practicing. Break the damn habit--"She used Cullen's favorite open. Bet my eyepatch he's been teaching her for months."

"Kaffas," Dorian said, again, "she did, didn't she. I knew the yawning dread I felt was familiar--and to think, I didn't even cheat." An appraising light dawned in his eyes. "You played the game backward in your head, didn't you."

"Seheron," said Bull. "Turns out, fighting a war is really fucking boring. I know--it was a surprise to me, too."

Easy, to steer the conversation well away from that shithole. Even on the best of days, Bull hated playing the weary veteran angle. Flirt with Dorian, make him stomp away from the table, irritated that Bull had ruined such a good conversation, and they could pretend this never happened.

Dorian spoke first. "I think I know that look," he said. "You don't stop calculating for even a second, do you? Let one hidden talent slip, and here you are, rushing to rearrange the board when you think I'm not looking."

"Look who's talking, charmer," Bull said. And there was his opening. "Been paying extra attention to my face lately, huh?"

The appraising look became a flat-out gleam. "No more than the rest of you, no," Dorian said, and stood. Seated, Bull could appreciate how tall he was, as far as humans went. How solid. He circled behind Bull, on his blind side, and slid an appraising finger across the breadth of Bull's shoulders, lingering over every scar he could find--all the ones that were visible, and all the ones that weren't, too. Only one point of contact, but it was electric. Bull swallowed hard.

So. This was how it went down in Tevinter, when they wanted to say _Sure, let's fuck_ without saying _Let's fuck_ outright.

Not good enough. This, the touch, the set of Dorian's shoulders as he walked away, head held high, was as routine as the Chargers' morning run. Bull could have been anyone Dorian was inviting up for a roll in the hay.

"Hey," Bull said. Dorian stopped mid-stride. "Your hand's not shaking anymore." 

Dorian looked down at it, clenched it into a fist. "I suppose it isn't," he said, and kept on walking. 

Some mixed feelings about that, huh. But he wasn't screaming and running for the hills. Still, there had to be something nice Bull could do for him.

He walked right into the mage party that night. _You learned so much about their staves last time,_ Inquisitor Lavellan had said under her breath, cracking a rare smile. _Some of them want to learn more about yours, Bull._

There was only one mage whose staff Bull wanted to check out. "Boss," Bull said, in the rotunda later that night, listening to a Senior Enchanter go on about the thin spots in the Veil in Skyhold. "You ever invite Solas down? Lady Vivienne? Dorian?"

"Solas is a cock," the Inquisitor said, under her breath, so as not to interrupt the speech. "Viv would kill the discussion as soon as she got in her head she was right." She shrugged. "Dorian might be fun."

She showed her limits at times like this, with things like these. Living in a little Dalish clan meant everyone already knew who was in and who was out of the club, and why. Bull had planted the idea in her head; what she did with it was up to her. 

_If we are necessitated to break them._ The Inquisitor's limitations: she couldn't bridge that gap between what she'd known then and what she had to be now. She didn't like being Herald of Andraste, and spent as much time away from Skyhold with her Seeker as possible; it could never be her home, the way it was Dorian's, or Sera's. Josephine and Cullen did all the real work of making the Inquisition an organization. It had momentum, and a cause, and that kept it together. 

They couldn't do anything about the cause, until Corypheus was defeated, and it would be stupid of them to even try to make a move until he was finished. But when that was done and dusted, momentum could be stalled. Sow dissent in the ranks. Spoil their winter stores. Burn down the ramshackle little city springing up in the valley, overcrowd the fortress itself with civilians and refugees--make people think that even after their escape at Haven, there was no safety for them. Do it over the course of years, so no one connected the dots. They'd waited hundreds of years for another chance at converting Thedas; they could be patient for this operation.

There. He had his answer to his superiors' question.

The Qun demanded submission, but it also demanded that everyone be their best self. That everyone spread what little good they could in the world, as individuals. This little disobediance didn't make him disloyal, or Tal-Vashoth, any more than partaking of alcohol with bas-sarebaas, or thinking good and hard about fucking a 'Vint, did.

He was Hissrad, and he was the Iron Bull. He'd written this report in his head. He'd never send it.

*

Dorian had started this, and Dorian was going to finish it.

Nothing happened, until Bull came back late from a long practice with the Chargers, exhausted, sweaty, ready for a nap. There was one thing he missed about Seheron: the mid-day naps. He turned the handle to his door, and it wasn't locked. Someone had opened the door to his room. Someone was still in there, waiting for him.

He wasn't on Seheron. It was probably just someone cleaning the floors. Surrounded by walls, on top of a mountain. He wasn't armed, but the nice thing about being eight feet tall was that if they didn't manage to take you down in the first rush, you were never really _un_ armed.

So he opened the door. 

"It's very cozy in here," Dorian said, in Tevene. 

There weren't a whole lot of qunari-sized chairs in Skyhold; the one Bull had managed to dig up was low to the ground. Dorian occupied it, and his legs were about a half a mile too long to tuck comfortably to the side. He'd clearly had a drink or two—not enough to affect his balance or his speech, but enough to make him loose-limbed. Languid. The mages in the library drank like that. 

Bull sat down on his bed. It made an audible creaking sound under his weight. Dorian's eyes flicked to the side-- _That's right, big guy. We both know what's going on here._ "It's out of the way. How'd you get in?" 

Ten years in the field, you were bound to get made a few times, and bound to come back to the barracks to find someone waiting for you with a sharp knife. And then you made sure it didn't happen again for a good long while.

Dorian couldn't have known any of that. 

"You said your door was always open," he said.

"It was locked," Bull said. 

"I've had a marvelous teacher." Dorian gestured to a set of picks he'd left on the table. 

"Five-foot-fuck-all, never an agreeable girl? Arrows strike like a dragon?"

"The very one. Now--I've been wondering--I hear you laughing down in the rotunda, one night, and suddenly, the Inquisitor extends an invitation to her 'high-level theoretical discussions,' when she's hardly looked twice at me since Redcliffe. How mysterious." 

"You wanted to go," Bull said, "she needed a nudge in the right direction. You have fun?" 

"How perceptive of you. The wine tasted like piss. The conversation was puerile. I can now say I've had the full southern Circle experience! No wonder they rose up, if they were stuffed into towers with that sort of company."

"Time of your life, huh." 

Dorian smiled-- _really_ smiled, like he had with Josie. It made his eyes crinkle up. Bull hadn't been close enough to notice that, before. "It was dreadful in every way imaginable," he said, and rose from his chair, strode across the room to take Bull's face in his hand--thumb at the corner of his mouth, just like before--and tilt it upward. "Perhaps we could find some way to improve my night."

Then he leaned over, and, cautiously, tentatively, kissed the corner of Bull's mouth. Bent Bull a little backwards, got one knee up on the bed. This close, he smelled like good wine, and perfume that Bull, for once, didn't care enough to categorize.

But--something about the pose--it set his teeth on edge. A tamassran, with pretty little backswept horns. Waiting for him in his quarters. Said she knew he needed relief. Working for the latest band of Tal-Vashoth to spring up. Got a knife into his side before he managed to break her arm, knock her out, send her off to the re-educators. Bull stiffened and turned his face away, and Dorian jerked back like he'd been burnt.

"Well, that was a bit of a wash," Dorian said, "we certainly won't be trying that again. If you'll pardon me--" 

Bull caught his wrist before he could turn to go. In this kind of mood, he should have been running straight for Vivienne, or challenging the Inquisitor to a fight, just to get stomped on. Dorian stared down at him, at his wrist, contemplative. Again, that sense that everything he was, the Iron Bull, Hissrad, all the others, were a puzzle Dorian was determined to solve. "I broke into your room," Dorian said, at last, covering Bull's hand with his own, "and you were bound to have had some sort of dreadful experience with that on Seheron."

Bull moved their joined hands to one of the scars on his ribs. "Naturally," Dorian said. "That would have been my first guess."

Then Dorian pulled away. He turned around and surveyed the room. There was a little shelf with couple of books on it, readings on basic magical theory Vivienne had assigned him; Dorian went to them and put them in alphabetical order. He waved a hand, and all the extra candles Bull had lying around lit themselves, to chase the shadows out of the corners of the room. He straightened the pillows on the chairs. Maybe the fussing was a 'Vint thing. Who knew. It was soothing, was what it was. Nice, to sit back and let someone take care of him, for once.

"You smell like a barn," Dorian said, turning back to face Bull. 

It was more insulting in Tevene than it was in the King's Tongue. "You like it," Bull said, "bet you were waiting until I came back from a good, long practice."

"Hush." Dorian smoothed a hand down Bull's bare shoulder, unbuckled the harness, set it on the table. He gave the eyepatch a sidelong look, then decided against it. The only wound worth showing off that he _hadn't_ gotten on Seheron. Figured. "You should know one thing, before you send me away."

"Yeah?"

"I abhor people who take credit for the work of others," said Dorian. He dropped to one knee and began working at Bull's ankle brace, realized it was part of a bigger contraption that went up the leg, sat back on his heels. Good look for him. "Your lock was far too complicated. I had Sera pick it for me. She did make me promise not to touch any of your 'private junk,' and I didn't have the heart to tell her that--"

"That's exactly what you came here to do?" 

"Quite," Dorian said. "However, as that's gone a bit south, I'll excuse myself."

"Stay," Bull said, curving a hand around the side of Dorian's face. Dorian closed his eyes. After all this, he was still ready to get kicked out. Braced for it, from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots. "Come on, big guy. I've never seen you back down so fast. Challenge too big for you?"

Dorian's glance between down his legs was pointed, but he didn't pull away. Bull could see the wheels turning in his head: how big it was; how long it'd take to get it up; whether he should give up and leave anyway. "I'm still tipsy," Dorian said, "and you're a wreck. If you think goading me will work, you're wrong. This could be a disaster." 

Bull brushed his thumb over Dorian's lower lip, and Dorian nearly went cross-eyed trying to look down at it. He recovered. He took the finger into his mouth and sucked, and Bull felt his pulse leap. 

"Parshaara," Bull said. The first word of qunlat he'd spoken out loud in months, probably. Dorian knew that one, all right, and didn't need any more encouragement. He rose to his feet gracefully, pushed Bull on his back, straddled his hips. "If this is a mistake--let it be a mistake. If it's a disaster, let it be a disaster."

**Author's Note:**

> Some side-notes:
> 
> \- The Rivaini defense Josephine uses is called the Sicilian defense in real life; [here's](http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1193340) the game their game is based off of, if you want to follow along, nerds (starting 34. Rxf8+; Qxf8) (I actually know nothing about chess). 
> 
> \- Clock that throwback to picking cool rocks up off the ground in the Deep Roads in DA:O. 
> 
> \- I am endlessly amused by the thought of Solas having to pick up the Thedosian equivalent of red Solo cups off the floor of the rotunda every few days.


End file.
